OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS!! - Locally Grown Herbs! [Summer 2004]

Yep. A sales pitch. This one's about herbs, and what it will cost us to keep using them, and even get better ones.

There's a grant :
Several gardeners and farmers got together and hustled the grant. Lo! and behold! The grant was granted! There are now $148,000 available for a pilot project. It's to find out how and whether Chinese medicinal herbs can be grown commercially in the US. Five states (NY, MN, WI, CA, and our own NM) are targeted. California and New York already have active growers and buyers, Minnesota and Wisconsin are starting up, and now it's New Mexico's turn! .

We have to find growers who will be willing to find out what will grow here in our high, dry and alkaline environment, and see if they can grow organic herbs that are as good as or better than what we now get from China.

We also have to have a group of practitioners who use herbs, have some sense of herbs' quality, and would be willing to try them out, then buy them and use them if good ones can be grown.

If we can grow and use our own high-quality herbs, we won't have to worry about customs and import restrictions, and 6-month delays in supply. We won't have to worry so about the availability of some of the herbs we use a lot, that the new FDA and the pharmaceutical companies are restricting or banning.

But WE NEED HELP . If you are willing to try out herbs, or grow herbs, or if you know people willing to try growing commercial quantities of herbs—remember, the grant is only for Chinese medicinal herbs—then please get in touch with:
Quinn Takei at (505) 306-3155 (OMANM Herb Committee chair), or
Selah Chamberlain at (505) 751-3284 .
Thanks

Also Read This Article on Charles Martin's Efforts to Get the Project Going thru NMSU